Russia has actually already changed their tactics from conventional to hybrid warfare, such as disinformation, cyberattacks, energy exports, migration and support for Russophilic Populists and fringe parties.

Because it is Russia and all it's generalls are corrupt and don't know the basics of military operations.

Meat wave as always

They never really expected to goto war.

Their doctrines can and do work *if* all the requisite parts are there and functioning.

But we've learnt that endemic corruption, so vital for their system to actually work, ended up undermining their whole military system.

As Trump put it "A Paper Tiger".

Russia is still capable of their main tactic, which is to f@#£ everything up.

And we see that influence world wide.

The closer Putin gets to being ousted the more rocky the world events will get.

Originally posted by Swines:

Because it is Russia and all it's generalls are corrupt and don't know the basics of military operations.

Meat wave as always

There goes my thousand word explanation. ^^ what he said.

You really wanna see anglosaxons tactics? Well, that's will be Poland and Finland.

Worry not, WW3 is about ~15-20 years, your kids will be drafted :)

Because he's fighting cold war era weaponry against cold war era weaponry. Weaponry that can't hit the side of a barn.

But it's plentiful, and cheap for them (as it is for us). That was in part how they withstood the sanctions.

As their front line air force is hardly being used. Frontline tanks even troops are kept in reserve in case NATO enters the war.

That may prolong the war, but it's cheaper.

However, it's getting kind of dicey, and he may want to go the tac nuke route (he would need about 7) and end it sooner than later, being his trolling seems to be upsetting Trump, and a risk of a wider war.

The thing is, he may want a wider war with Trump seeing us as being all chat and no hat. Including the Chinese waiting in the wings as we're bogged down in Ukraine.

That's opening for China in Taiwan. For North Korea to finally get the south. For regime change in Israel.

In order for that to be done, Putin needs to set a trap for Mr Trump, and he just may go for the cheese.

Well, first of all, Russia isn't fighting against Ukraine.

It is fighting against an Ukraine supported by the entirety of the western nations while these are not at war. And that doesn't just mean all but unassailable supply lines, it also means there are no arms factory that can be targeted, no equipment depots that can be blown up, no satellites that can be taken out before they gather intelligence for Ukraine etc etc.


With that entirely out of the way - and it's not a small part of why Ukraine is mounting a successfull defense - we must also consider that unlike NATO, Russia (and the countries of the Warsaw Pact in general) did not came out of the Cold War in a position to conduct an orderly reduction of their military.
They came out of a period of economic crisis entirely without precedent in the history of the world, combined with the dissolution of any political system at the same time.
Which brought the entire military machine to such a screeching halt that while factories and R&D practically went up in flames, generals, colonels, majors and sometimes even captains were allowed to move so unchecked that entire divisions worth of equipment were sold peacemeal on the black market.

So the reason why Russia didn't "modernize" at the same pace as the West did is that they didn't have the resources to.
NATO reduced the size of their military - and the accompanying military spending - and devoted the resources that were freed in such a way to modernizing. A smaller but "better" army.
Russia didn't.

And modernizing an army doesn't just mean getting modern equipment.
It also means getting the officers, the soldiers and - most importantly - the NCOs to be familiar with that equipment and capable to use it to the best of their abilities.


Combining all of the above with the fact that the Soviet Union - under which the vast majority of officers and NCOs that were operating in the 2000s would have been trained - didn't exactly encourage innovation and independent thinking as part of the military process... well, you get an army that is anchored to their "standard doctrines" not because they believe them to be the best on the field.
Rather that choice was dictated by necessity coming from a combination of little to no economical resources and the political climate.


Coming back to Ukraine, as mentioned, they are mounting a relatively successfull defensive action - in that they are still falling back but managed to turn the war into one of attrition.
But Russia is fighting with decades old equipment and doctrine.
Ukraine isn't.

And Russia is paying the price of being on the offensive much more than it is paying the price of using outdated equipment and doctrines.
And the proof of that is that the few offensive actions undertaken by Ukraine ended in abject disaster (the incursion into Kursk and Belgorod for example), all the advantages of modern equipment and doctrine notwithstanding.

Putin's most Elite Troops :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8fWp-i-BGA&ab_channel=FinnClark

Originally posted by Vote Quimby:

You really wanna see anglosaxons tactics? Well, that's will be Poland and Finland.

Worry not, WW3 is about ~15-20 years, your kids will be drafted :)

Alright calm down Russia, you're still four years into a three day operation.

Russia now is smaller and weaker than it's been in centuries. The equipment they've inherited from the Soviet Union is getting older than the soldiers' grandads, and oligarchical rule favors loyalty over talent.

Ukraine is getting essential Western aid, but the claim that Russia is fighting NATO is pure cope. Vietnam and Korea got indirect help from China and the USSR, but the fact remains that the US failed to accomplish its objectives in these countries. The same principle applies here and in just about every major war. Giving material support to friendly or neutral belligerents to indirectly weaken one's adversaries is a strategy as old as war itself.

To the tune of the theme to Gilligan's Island:

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
a tale of a hateful load,
that started with too many trucks,
upon the muddy road.
Putin was a mighty foolish man,
Prigozhin doomed for sure,
five divisions did march that day,
for a three day detour,
a three day detour.

A Russian professor called my nephew a f@ggot yesterday even though he could have gotten fired for it. That struck me as a microcosm of the Russian approach to most things.

Blue jeans and rock and roll will never defeat solidarity and the combined power of the proletariat

Hold on to your hats, I have an ancient pun to unload here...

Its because once WW2 was over they had no civil economy to speak of, so progress...
kept Stalin'.

Originally posted by DarkCrystalMethod:

Hold on to your hats, I have an ancient pun to unload here...

Its because once WW2 was over they had no civil economy to speak of, so progress...
kept Stalin'.

:steamsunny:

Damn. How will centrally planned economies ever recover?

(Suboptimally, if at all, lololol!)